Österreich als Symptom einer europäischen Krise

Austria as a symptom of a European crisis

Abstract

Usually Austrian’s presidential campaigns hardly get much attention. This time it has been different. In May 2016 the right-wing candidate Norbert Hofer almost won the elections and afterwards challenged the winner Alexander Van der Bellen at constitutional court because of formal irregularities. Right-wing populism has become widely spread all over Europe. This paper tries to analyze some of the reasons for this phenomenon in the perspective of the Austrian election and to give an overview about the main topics that split the political directions in Europe as they are refugee crisis and social policy.